can also be organized, as noted in Chapter 1, around an integrated approach to accessibility that seeks to alleviate the difficulties that teachers may have to consider within the diversity of educational profiles in order to prevent and combat the disruption of the principle of equality caused by failure or dropping out of school. This approach to accessibility is based on identifying pupils at risk of failure or dropping out of school, particularly through diagnostic assessments carried out, for example, in primary school. It is intended to intensify the support arrangements offered to the students identified as such through specific measures targeting the development of the skills of learners, teachers and headteachers. A corrective approach to accessibility described in Chapter 1 links the social responsibility of schools to forms of accommodation and support that seek to respond, on a case-by-case basis, to needs inferred from a challenge or a medically or psychologically disabling health disorder. In most OECD countries, it is based on an assessment of needs carried out by a multidisciplinary team involving stakeholders from inside and outside the school environment with the aim of formalizing an individual educational plan that explains the accommodations and supports to be implemented.
I.2. Accessibility: an imperative legitimized by a dedicated institutional framework
This reinvention of the school is, however, consubstantial with the advent of an institutional framework that embodies the imperative of accessibility and the principles and shifts in perspective claimed. As Frandji shows (Chapter 8), this institutional framework takes the form of facilities whose objectives vary according to the prevailing epochs and rationalities. These facilities aim to democratize the school system when they ensure equal access to schooling. They take the form of initiatives and measures linking the accessibilization of school environments with schooling in mainstream environments of learners with a disability or disabling disorder, such as the creation of special classes, support and guidance facilities for learners; they also consist of priority education policies that have the aim of removing barriers to access to schooling by allocating additional resources that target disadvantaged students and areas and support educational differentiation.
These facilities target the fight against educational vulnerability when they identify the accessibility of education systems as a mean allowing for combining performance and equity to combat social inequalities. For example, this may take the form of measures and initiatives targeting the most vulnerable populations and linking the accessibilization of school environments to the acquisition of a minimum base of learning, knowledge and skills that are socially and professionally capitalizable.
The aim of these facilities is to maximize the chances of academic and social success for all learners, regardless of their individual characteristics, when they make accessibility a vector for combating discrimination, and for preventing academic failure and dropping out of school. They consist of measures promoting an inclusive school that is concerned with giving concrete expression to the individual rights of students and associating the accessibilization of school environments to the promotion of each individual’s talents and his/her commitment to the educational processes that are made possible on a daily basis by the actions of “inclusive” teachers. These facilities tend to emphasize the early identification of factors hindering school performance and the well-being of pupils in order to avoid, a priori, recourse to special settings.
The institutional anchoring of accessibility is also inseparable from the existence of professionals who specialize in managing school diversity, such as special teachers, and, more generally, as shown by Plaisance (Chapter 7), from a new division of labor between the mainstream and the special provision. Reforms of the specialist provision undertaken by the countries in the European Union have gradually extended the provision’s aims to include all stakeholders involved in schools, over and above support for pupils in difficulty. They require the provision to contribute to the prevention of school failure through institutional accommodations and arrangements that complement the initiatives targeting students themselves. Before defining the conditions for a referral to a special setting, the provision is asked to act on school environments by supporting, for example, teachers or school heads to enable the school to put learner’s success at the heart of concerns (European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education 2019).
As Evans shows (Chapter 2), many OECD countries have linked their inclusive policies to the development of targeted facilities and resources to enable schools to make their educational environments more accessible. These resources may consist of financial incentives to offset the additional costs of educational differentiation and the diversification of modes of educational organization, such as the “model demonstration projects”1 developed in the United States or the “new strategic innovation fund”2 created by Ireland. They are methodological when they take the form of guides for good practice and one-off training activities for teachers; Norway, for example, has established psycho-educational support services to provide methodological support to schools. These resources consist of human support, especially when, as in Malta or the United Kingdom, coordinators specializing in the management and/or consideration of educational needs are responsible for supporting schools in defining and implementing policies aimed at making school environments more accessible. These human resources also target teachers by having special teachers supporting them, as is the case in Italy, in their efforts to personalize practices by advising them, for example, on the strategies that may be required in particular cases, or even by providing them with tools on which to base their work. Of course, they also address students with special educational needs through educational assistants intended to support them in the exercise of their profession as students, as is the case in France (OECD 1999; European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education 2013).
Moreover, the institutional anchoring of accessibility is inseparable from the use of tools and procedures intended to create a culture of success on the basis of empowering school actors to take responsibility for implementing inclusive education and of constantly improving the quality of practices. Above and beyond the adaptation of practices to presupposed needs, the imperative of accessibility finds its protective character in the empowering effect of the modes of pedagogical organization, that is, in the identity-related resources acquired by people to enable them to define themselves and act as actors capable of being the authors of their future and actively engage in educational processes (Rose and Meyer 2002). As a result, the concretization of the accessibility imperative is consubstantial with the mobilization of governance mechanisms and management tools from the business world in education systems, notably through the generalization of evaluative practices. The mobilization of such tools should make it possible to identify, as Evans shows (Chapter 2), the use of additional resources mobilized by education policies for learners with special educational needs. This is intended to provide information on the ability of education systems to make themselves universally accessible to the greatest number of students while being adapted to the particularities of each individual in order to satisfy the principle of equity without contravening the requirement of performance. The regular use of assessment tools and techniques, particularly when they include the specific dimensions of inclusive education, as in Italy, is intended to provide schools with indicators and procedures that encourage them to look inward and question their effectiveness in terms of educational success and well-being.
The generalization of evaluation practices has been accompanied by a change in perspective. As Mons points out (Chapter 3), evaluation methods go beyond the measurement and certification of student achievement; they focus on the ability of young people to mobilize the skills required to solve concrete problems in the context of lifelong learning and, correlatively, on the ability of school